History of Drama

History of Drama from its Medieval Origins to the Closing of the Theatres

The early history of English drama is important because
• it shows how the instinct for dramatic representation finds its outlets,
• it tells us a great deal about the workings of the popular imagination, and
• it throws some light on the themes and conventions of later drama.

The Origins of Drama
The origins of drama as we know it are more the concern of anthropologists because drama and religious ritual seem to have been bound up with one another in the earlier stages of all civilizations.
These things lie in the background of all drama:
• Folk celebrations,
• Ritual miming of such elemental themes as death and resurrection,
• Seasonal festivals with appropriate symbolic actions.
As far as we can trace the history of English drama, it begins with the elaboration of the ecclesiastical liturgy in mutually answering dialogues.
Of the other sources --pre-Christian seasonal festivals, St. George and Robin Hood plays, maypole dances, and similar folk activities-- we know little else except that they existed.
No substantial continuity can be established between the origins of European drama in the Middle Ages and the drama of Greece and Rome, which had already run its course by the time the Christian era began.
Strolling minstrels and other varieties of itinerant entertainments might have preserved some bit of Roman theater but they eventually became absorbed into the repertory of the profession long before it contributed anything to the acting of miracle or mystery and morality plays.
Tropes to Liturgical Dramas
With its two great festivals of Christmas and Easter, and its celebration of the significant points of Christ's life and career from birth to resurrection, the Christian Church itself was inherently dramatic.
The ceremonies designed to commemorate these special Christian events naturally lent themselves to dramatization, from
• simple chanting between priest and choir or two sections of the choir to
• more elaborate acting out of a scene between two characters or sets of characters.
These ceremonal dramatizations were known as tropes--simple but dramatic elaborations of parts of the liturgy--and they represent the beginnings of medieval drama.

The Quem Quaeritis? Trope One of the earliest recorded tropes was one performed at Easter in the 10th century. It depicts a dialogue between the three Marys and the angel at Christ's tomb, and it is known as the "Quem Quaeritis? Trope" because it asks the question "Whom do ye seek?": - Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, o Christicolae? - Jesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicolae. - Non est hic; surrexit, sicut praedixerat. Ite, nuntiate quia surrexit de sepulchro - "Whom do you seek, O followers of Christ? - "Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified." - "He is not here. He is risen, just as he foretold. Go, announce that he is risen from the sepulcher." The "Quem Quaeritis? trope" is often identified as the earliest instance of medieval drama.

The simple trope eventually grew into liturgical drama, which was drama arising from or developed in connection with church rites or services. Liturgical drama was fully developed in the 12th century. At first these dramatic renderings were presented in Latin but as they increased in popularity, they were presented in the vernacular.
Liturgical dramas represented dimensions of the life of Christ. A play bringing the shepherd to the crib of the infant was introduced at Christmas. An Epiphany play introduced the three kings and even a mechanical star. The first Passion Play developed in the 13th century.

What is a Passion Play?
The passion play began in the Middle Ages and was originally a work depicting Christ's passion or crucifixion. It was performed from about the 13th century onward. In its later manifestations, it came to include both Passion and Resurrection. The form gradually died in popularity after the 16th and 17th centuries, but it remains locally popular.
At the same time the "plots" developed, the staging of the plays became more elaborate, which made it difficult to confine them to their traditional area: the choir portion of the church. As they grew more elaborate, the performances began to extend physically down the nave, using appropriate portions of the church as needed. At this point, however, they were still confined to the church, both physically and in subject matter.
Miracle Plays
Eventually, dramatic representations moved out of the church altogether--and this simple move brought massive changes to the face of drama. First, they were produced in the churchyard itself and then later they moved into an even larger space, traditionally the marketplace of the town or even a convenient meadow.
Once outside the church, the vernacular ousted Latin and the focus of the story moved away from just the liturgy to encompass the whole range of sacred history from the Creation to the Last Judgment. Drama began to present the entire range of religious history.
Presentation of the plays outdoors became dependent upon on the weather, so they could no longer be acted on all of the different chuch festivals. The establishment of the feast of Corpus Christi (May or June) in 1264 provided a suitable day for play presentation. Corpus Christi was a good choice because it was warm but also because it involved a professional observance with the Host carried about and displayed at various stations. Dramas were generally given on wagons or pageant carts, which were in effect moving stages. Each pageant cart presented a different scene of the cycle and the wagons followed each other, repeating their scenes at successive stations. Carts were often very elaborate, equipped with a changing room, a stage proper, and two areas which represented hell (usually a painted dragon's head) and heaven (a balcony). Stage machinery and sound effects became integral parts of the plotting.
When the plays moved outdoors, who controlled them also changed. Trade or craft guilds -- important in many ways to social and economic life in the Middle Ages-- took over sponsoring the plays, making them more secular. In fact, each pageant became the province of a particular guild. For example, at York The Fall of Man was presented by the coopers and The Last Supper by the bakers.
Liturgical drama, confined to the church and designed to embellish the ecclesiastical ritual, thus gave way to plays in English, performed in the open and separated from the liturgy though still religious in subject matter. Such early plays are known as miracle or mystery plays.

Miracle Plays vs. Mystery Plays Critics tend to distinguish between miracle and mystery plays: • Miracle plays had as their subject a story from the Scriptures or the life and martyrdom of a saint. • Mystery plays usually base their stories on the New Testament. For our purposes, the inclusive term miracle play can be used to identify works dealing with either Biblical history or saints' lives

It is at this stage that elements from minstrel performances and older folk festivals began to be incorporated into what was originally Christian drama. These new elements provided vitality for a drama whose primary function was fast beginning to be plain old entertainment.
The transition from simple liturgical drama to miracle and mystery play can't be accurately dated or documented. It is believed that miracle plays developed rapidly in the 13th century; there are records of cycles of miracle plays in many regions of England during the 14th-15th centuries, even into the 16th.

Cycles of Plays & The Wakefield Master The cycles were developed by extending the themes of liturgical drama both backward and forward, to include the Creation, the Fall, early Old Testament stories, and Doomsday. Almost complete cycles of miracle plays survive from Chester, York & Wakefield. Parts of other cycles also survive. Some of the plays seem to have been written by the same person, who has come to be known as the "Wakefield Master." They date from the 15th century, and the two most famous are Noah and The Second Shepherds' Play.

The development of the dialogue and the action in these early dramas is relatively naive, simple, as is the story presented. As time passed, however, touches of realistic comedy were introduced.
Morality Plays
While the miracle plays were still going strong, another medieval dramatic form emerged in the 14th century and flourished in the 15th-16th centuries, a form which has more direct links with Elizabethan drama. This is the morality play, which differs from the miracle play in that it does not deal with a biblical or pseudo-biblical story but with personified abstractions of virtues and vices who struggle for man's soul. Simply put, morality plays dealt with man's search for salvation
Morality plays were dramatized allegories of the life of man, his temptation and sinning, his quest for salvation, and his confrontation by death. The morality play, which developed most fully in the 1 5th century, handled the subjects that were most popular among medieval preachers and drew considerably on contemparary homiletic (sermon, preaching) technique.

Key Elements & Themes of Morality Plays Morality plays held several elements in common: • The hero represents Mankind or Everyman. • Among the other characters are personifications of virtues, vices and Death, as well as angels and demons who battle for the possession of the soul of man. • The psychomachia, the battle for the soul, was a common medieval theme and bound up with the whole idea of medieval allegory, and it found its way into medieval drama--and even into some Renaissance drama, as Dr. Faustus indicates. • A character known as the Vice often played the role of the tempter in a fashion both sinister and comic. Certain themes found a home in the morality plays: • The theme of the Seven Deadly Sins, which was a commonplace of medieval art and literature; • The theme of Mercy and Peace pleading before God for man's soul against Truth and Righteousness; and • The Dance of Death, which focuses on Death as God's messenger come to summon all, high and low. The Dance of Death is a dramatic rendition of the ubi sunt theme, which figures so largely in literature of the Middle Ages. The ubi sunt theme rhetorically asks "Where are all those who were before us?" (ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?).

The earliest complete extant morality play is The Castle of Perseverance, which was written circa 1425. This was an an elaborate play with 3650 lines and 34 characters, and its theme is the fight between Mankind's Good Angel and his supporters and his Bad Angel, who is supported by the Seven Deadly Sins. The action takes Man from his birth to the Day of Judgment. Everyman (ca. 1500) is perhaps the best known morality play. It depicts Everyman's journey in the face of Death. The hero is capably assisted to his end by Good Deeds.
The Interlude
Toward the end of the 15th century, there developed a type of morality play which dealt in the same allegorical way with general moral problems, although with more pronounced realistic and comic elements. This kind of play is known as the interlude.
The term might originally have denoted a short play or playlet actually performed between the courses of a banquet. It can be applied to a variety of short entertainments. including secular farces and witty dialogues with a religious or political point.
Although the transition can't be documented adequately because so many texts haven't survived, the term "interlude" is employed by literary historians to denote the plays which mark the transition from medieval religious drama to Tudor secular drama.
Henry Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres --at the end of the 15th century-- is the earliest extant purely secular play in English. He had already written a morality play entitled Nature.
Medwall was one of a group of early Tudor playwrights that included John Rastell and John Heywood, who ended up being the most important dramatist of them all. Heywood's interludes were often written as part of the evening's entertainment at a nobleman's house and their emphasis is more on amusement than instruction. Heywood's art resembles the modern music-hall or vaudeville sketch. The plots are very basic.
Shifts in Theme: from Salvation to Education, Religion to Politics
The shift of thematic interest from salvation to education --which marks a distinction between medieval morality play and Tudor interlude-- was accompanied by a parallel shift from religion to politics. And when religion is treated, it is treated in the spirit of controversy produced by the Reformation and the great debate about the true form of Christianity.
Such controversial or propagandist morality plays abandoned the large universal moral and religious themes of the older moralities and were liable to portray the vices as Catholics.
Among those who wrote Protestant propaganda plays was John Bale (1495-1563), who wrote King Johan (part history play). The play is a mix of history, allegory, medieval vice and virtue representation, and some typical characters are Civil Order, Usurped Power and Sedition.

The Importance of King Johan This play can in a sense be called the first English history play, but it is history treated in a very special way. It is not an example of the English chronicle play, which we know from Shakespeare.

The move from religious themes to etho-political ones can be seen in John Skelton’s Magnificence (1515), aimed at Cardinal Wolsey, which shows the rise, fall and final repentance of a worldly prince seduced and eventually redeemed by allegorical figures, such as Virtues and Vices.
The Classical Influence on English Comedy
At the same time, classical influences were being felt, providing for a developing national drama new themes and new structures, first in comedy and then later in tragedy.
Taking its theme from the Miles Gloriosus of Roman playwright Plautus, about 1553 Nicholas Udall wrote the comic Ralph Roister Doister. This play brings the braggart soldier for the first time into English drama. Udall's characters function both as traditional vices/virtues and as traditional characters in Latin comedy (for example, the Parasite, who also shows up in the plays of Ben Jonson). The plot is simple, but it does include a complication and a resolution, which shows a firmer grasp on structure.
Another comedy, Gammer Gurton's Needle, by "Mr. S.," probably William Stevenson of Christ's College, was written a few years later and produced at the college. Here, the themes and characters of Plautus combine with the comedy of English rural life. The plot is crude and comic: "Gammer" Gurton loses her needle and it is found sticking in the pants of her servant. However, the construction in five acts is effective.
It was not until George Gascoigne produced his comic play Supposes at Gray's Inn in 1566 that prose made its first appearance in English drama. Gascoigne's play is another comedy adapted from a foreign source, from the Italian of Ariosto. Gascoigne's play is far more sophisticated and subtle than Ralph Roister Doister or Gammer Gurton's Needle. In fact, it is the first of many witty Italianate comedies in English which includes Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado about Nothing.
Although we rarely read any of these early works, they are important because they bring to English drama elements that would be further developed by its master playwrights. Moreover, Gascoigne's work indicates that the popular tradition of the English drama could be modified--enhanced--by classical influences and by the needs of a more sophisticated audience.
English Tragedy
At the same time these changes were occurring in English comedy, the Humanist interest in Latin and Greek classics helped produce a new kind of English tragedy.
There were no tragedies among the miracle or morality plays; in fact, there was nothing that could be called tragedy in English drama before the classical influence began.
The favourite classical writer of tragedies among English Humanists was not Sophocles or Euripides but Seneca, the Stoic Roman. Although they were never meant to be acted, Seneca's nine tragedies provided Renaissance playwrights with volatile materials: they adapted Greek myths to produce violent and sombre treatments of murder, cruelty, and lust. Seneca's works were translated into English by Jasper Heywood and others in the mid-16th century, and they greatly influenced the direction of drama on the English stage.

Senecan Tragedy Seneca's tragedies are bloody and bombastic, combining powerful rhetoric, Stoic moralizing and elements of sheer horror. In them, there are numerous emotional crises, and characters are not subtly drawn but are ruled by their passions, being mixtures of sophistication and crudeness. Seneca's plays were discovered in Italy in the mid-16th century and translated into English, where they greatly influenced the developing English tragedy.

Although Seneca's writing style did not provide a good model for developing English playwrights --it was polished yet monotonous-- his methodology did. Like the sonnet, the typical Senecan tragedy was ordered and concentrated. It was a good proving ground for would-be dramatists.
Before Senecan tragedy fully influenced the English dramatists, there were some other attempts at the genre. Richard Edwards' Damon and Pythias (1564) and John Pickering's New Interlude of Vice Containing the History of Horestes (1567) were two early tragedies that relied on classical themes. Thomas Preston's Cambises (1570), which billed itself as a "new tragical comedy," combined features of both genres. Gorboduc --also known as Ferrex and Porrex-- written by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton and produced around 1561-2 is considered the first successful English tragedy in the Senecan style:
• It is divided into 5 acts,
• It follows the classical manner in avoiding violence on the stage (instead, it presents it offstage), and
• It is written in blank verse, the first English play to be so.
Professional Players and Theatres
As drama became more abundant and more varied, professionalism developed both among authors and actors. Some actors were independent companies who roamed around; still others were attached as servants to wealthy noblemen and were under their protection.

Players & Theatres: Fast Facts Here are some quick facts about the development of professional players and theatres: • In 1583 Queen Elizabeth's Master of the Revels formed a company of players for the Queen. • In 1576, James Burbage, leader of the Earl of Leicester's men, build the first permanent theater, called "The Theatre," in a field near Shoreditch, out of the city and thus out of the control of the Lord Mayor, who was the official "censor" of plays. • Other permanent, public theatres soon followed: the Curtain, 1577; the Rose, 1588; the Swan, 1595. • Shakespeare's theatre, the Globe, was built in 1598. • In addition to the public theatres, there were private ones, chief among them the Blackfriars (1576). They were different from public theatres because they: # were roofed, # had more elaborate interior arrangements, and # presented plays originally acted by child players.

The University Wits
The growing popularity and diversity of the drama, its secularization, and the growth of a class of writers who were not members of holy orders led in the 16th century to a new literary phenomenon, the secular professional playwright.
The first to exploit this situation was a group of writers known as the University Wits, young men who had graduated at Oxford or Cambridge with no patrons to sponsor their literary efforts and no desire to enter the Church.
They turned to playwriting to make a living. In doing so they made Elizabethan drama more literary and more dramatic --and they also had an important influence on both private and public theatres because they worked for each. They set the course for later Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, and they paved the way for Shakespeare.
The University Wits were:
• John Lyly (1554-1606) is best known far court comedies, generally for private theatres, but also wrote mythological and pastoral plays. Endimion & Euphues.
• George Peele (1558-96) began writing courtly mythological pastoral plays like Lyly's, but also wrote histories and biblical plays. The Arraignment of Paris.
• Robert Greene (1558-92), who founded romantic comedy, wrote plays which combined realistic native backgrounds with an atmosphere of romance, as well as comedies. The Honourable History of Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay.
• Thomas Lodge (1557-1625) tended toward euphustic prose romances. His Rosalynde provided Shakespeare with the basis for As You Like It. His most important work is his picaresque tale The Unfortunate Traveller, an early novel.
• Thomas Kyd (155~94), who founded romantic tragedy, wrote plays mingling the themes of love, conspiracy, murder and revenge. Adapted elements of Senecan drama to melodrama. His The Spanish Tragedy (1580s) is the first of the series of revenge plays which captured the Elizabethan and Jacobean imaginations. In these plays, violence and grossness comes to the stage. For example, in The Spanish Tragedy, one of the characters bites off his tongue and spits it on the stage.

The Importance of The Spanish Tragedy The Spanish Tragedy brings to the Elizabethan stage numerous elements picked up by later writers: • the revenge theme, • the play within a play, • madness real and faked, and • the Machievellian master of malicious plotting. This play was the first truly popular tragedy af the English stage and one of the most influential.

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Although great dramatic advances had been made to this point, English tragedy still hadn't discovered a proper language --meter, style-- for dramatic delivery. What it needed was a blank verse eloquent and musical enough to add the effect of poetic conviction to rhetorical excitement. Neither had it turned to themes that came truly home to the Elizabethan imagination.
It was up to Christopher Marlowe to begin the process of accomplishing these feats. Although he died young, Marlowe's technique and invention set the stage for the greatest Renaissance playwright, William Shakespeare.
Marlowe is the most impressive dramatist among the University Wits. His first play was the two-part Tamburlaine the Great (1587-88), which was important because it introduced his style of blank verse, referred to as Marlowe's mighty line: the lines were quick-paced, not slow; they mirrored the emotional pitch of the plot.
This play is also important for introducing the Overreacher character into the drama, someone who is intoxicated with power and stretches a bit too far beyond his means and control, thus losing what he has gained. The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (1588-89) presents a Tamburlaine on the intellectual level: his ambition is for ultimate knowledge. This play has a specific Christian background (i.e., forbidden knowledge), and it retains many elements of the old morality plays (psychomachia, for example).
In The Jew of Malta (around 1590), Marlowe writes about a Machiavellian man, full of greed & cunning.
Although Marlowe wrote other plays, nothing measures up to Tamburlaine and Dr. Faustus. It has been said by many that his early and violent death in 1593--he was stabbed in a tavern brawl, which apparently began in a dispute over the bill--cut short a career that had it continued might actually have rivalled Shakespeare's.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Despite the iconic status which time and literary history have bestowed upon him, William Shakespeare probably saw himself as just another professional man of the theatre. Entering the scene first as an actor and later concerned first and foremost with making a living as a playwright, it's a good bet that he never considered any sort of long-lasting literary fame. He began his career as a poet, and he wrote plays during 1590-1611.
Shakespeare never wrote one single type of play at a time; therefore, it is nearly impossible to divide his career chronologically. We rather arbitrarily break Shakespeare's drama up into several categories:

Apprentice Plays (they show his experimentation with different genres and forms) • the 3 Henry VI plays (1590-92) • Titus Andronicus (1593) • The Comedy of Errors (1590): the only one not written for the public theatre • Richard III (1592-93) • The Taming of the Shrew (ca. 1594) Romantic Comedies • The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594) • Love's Labours Lost (1594) • A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596) • The Merchant of Venice (1596-97) • Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99) • As You Like It (1599-1600) • Twelfth Night (1599-1600) History Plays • Richard II (1595-96) • Henry IV Parts I & II (1597-98) • Henry V (1598-99) • King John (1596-97) Tragedies • Romeo and Juliet (1595-96) • Julius Caesar (1599-1600) • Hamlet (1600-01) • Othello (1603-04) • King Lear (1605-06) • Macbeth (1606) • Antony and Cleopatra (1607) Problem Plays or Bitter Comedies • Troilus and Cressida (1602) • All's Well That Ends Well (1602-04) • Measure for Measure (1604) Political Plays • Coriolanus Romances • Pericles (uncertain date) • Cymbeline (1609) • The Winter's Tale (1610) • The Tempest (1611) After The Tempest --which has often been called Shakespeare's literal farewell to the stage-- the playwright retired to his home in Stratford, and for the last few years of his life he wrote nothing at all, although he did collaborate on a few plays with fellow writers Beaumont and Fletcher. In addition to his plays, Shakespeare was also a prolific lyricist --many of his dramas contain embedded songs-- and a versatile sonneteer.

Ben Jonson (1573-1637)
The playwright who over time has been the most compared and contrasted with Shakespeare is Ben Jonson, who is the one great example in English of the Renaissance Humanist turned dramatist and poet.
Jonson is very much a bridge figure, and his work reflects a changing historical and social perspective. His life spanned the height of the Elizabethan Renaissance but reached well into the reign of Charles I and into a very different cultural atmosphere from that which prevailed at the end of the 16th century. Jonson was writing when Spenser was working on The Faerie Queene and Shakespeare was in the thick of his career as a playwright, but he outlived both of them.
Jonson's work is varied in theme and content. He wrote humour comedies, intrigue comedies, and satiric comedies, all of which are marked by a characteristic blend of savagery and humour, of moral feeling and the grim relish of the monstrous absurdities of human nature. He also produced two tragedies on Roman themes.

Jonson's Key Works • Every Man in His Humour (1598), a comedy of intrigue • Cynthia's Revels (1600), a mythological satire • The Poetaster (1601), which chronicles Jonson's feud with fellow playwrights like Marston, which came to be known as the War of the Theatres. • Volpone, or the Fox (1605), a satiric comedy that is Jonson's own invention: it includes overreachers and scenes of gulling. • Epicoene, or the Silent Woman (1609), another "gulling" comedy which hinges on the fooling of one character by another. • The Alchemist (1610), another satire which focuses again on gulling. • Bartholomew Fair (1614) • Sejanus (1603), a Roman tragedy • Catiline (1611), a Roman tragedy

Like Shakespeare, Jonson did not confine his artistry to one form but dabbled in a variety of genres and styles. He was particularly fond, however, of the satiric and faintly fierce, even misanthropic, comedies like The Alchemist and Volpone, which are perhaps his two most characteristic plays.
Although to modern readers, Jonson's abilities are dimmed by those of Shakespeare, to his contemporaries he was every bit as inventive and creative and entertaining --in fact, his plays were in some ways more accessible to audiences because they were not as dense and multifaceted. His poetry spawned an entire school of young poets who emulated his style, known as the Sons of Ben.

Other Playwrights of Note

While Shakespeare and Jonson are the two most popular Elizabethan and early Jacobean playwrights, there were other important figures. These writers invented new genres and took the tragedy in new, bold and occasionally even perversely horrible directions:

• George Chapman (1559-1634) infused ethical and philosophical spirit into his plays. Generally known as a translator of Homer, but was also a writer of several comedies and five tragedies which show the Elizabethan interest in Stoic philosophy. Bussy D'Ambois (1610).
• John Marston (d. 1634) began as a writer of coarse and violent verse satires and liked exuberant language. He wrote melodramatic tragedies of love and revenge, as well as cynical comedies which combine shows of bitter human folly with wild farce. The Malcontent (1604).
• Thomas Heywood (1570-1641) wrote on historical & patriotic themes; had a kind of ribald comedy he worked into all of his plays. His is known for his domestic tragedies, plays which deal with tragic results of passion or lust in ordinary family situations, like A Woman Killed with Kindness (1627).
• Thomas Dekker (1570-1641) wrote a variety of plays and is particularly known for his city comedies, plays which focus exclusively on urban life, like The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599). Also wrote morality plays.
• Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626) played variations on the revenge theme, exploring the corrupting power of revenge. He is best known for those plays which focus on the spectacle of injured innocence turning monstrous in an attempt to avenge wrongs against it. The Revenger's Tragedy (1607).
• Thomas Middleton (1570-1627) dealt in his comedies with London life, using tricksters & dupes, but he also wrote tragedies. A Trick to Catch the Old One .
• Frances Beaumont (1584-1616) & John Fletcher (1579-1625). In their plays the Jacobean drama gives up any attempt to grapple with moral problems to indulge in the skilful professional exploitation of titillating, pathetic or emotionally extravagant situations. The Maid's Tragedy (1611).
• Philip Massinger (15B3-1640) is best known for his comedies. A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1633).
• John Ford (1586 1639) developed an interest in the psychology of frustrated and of illicit love, which produced a number of plays like ‘Tis Pity She's a Whore (1624). He was fond of distraught melancholy.
• James Shirley (1596-1666) was in full career as a dramatist when the closing of the theatres by the Puritans in 1642 put an end for the time being to the publicly acted drama. He wrote tragedies of Italianate intrigue and villainy or of dark passion, tragicomedies in the Fletcher tradition and comedies of manners which to some degree point forward to the comedy of the Restoration. The Cardinal (1641).

John Webster (1580-1625)

John Webster (1580-1625) is one of the first wave of playwrights to begin working before the closing of the theatres. Although he was a contemporary of Jonson, his work is almost diametrically opposed in content, focus and tone.
Like Ford, Shirley and Tourneur, Webster was fascinated by how ambition, covetousness and lust could motivate the typical villain. Sometimes there is such an emphasis on villainy --on its cruel aspects, its horrors-- that motive seems really unimportant and the interest of the plays lies in the virtuosity with which cruelty is manifested or the nobility with which a vicious character meets his doom when there is no alternative.
The White Devil (1610) and The Duchess of Malfi (1614) are his best plays. They are episodic in structure, allowing Webster to halt the movement of the plot while he exploits the terror ar pathos of the moment.

The Closing of the Theatres

In September of 1642 the puritan parliament by edict* forbade all stage plays and closed the theatres.
They rapidly fell into disrepair and neglect; at the Restoration in 1660, only the Red Bull was still intact, and soon it too was superseded by the new, indoor theatres with their proscenium arches, and French traditions in acting --in particular, women were for the first time seen as actors.
Few of the great writers for the theatre were still active when the theatres were closed. John Ford, and James Shirley were still alive, but only William Davenant carried the older traditions into the new period.

*The edict (2 September 1642) "Whereas the distressed estate of Ireland, steeped in her own blood, and the distressed estate of England, threatened with a cloud of blood by a civil war, call for all possible means to appease and avert the wrath of God, appearing in these judgements; among which, fasting and prayer, having been often tried to be very effectual, having been lately, and are still enjoined; and whereas public sports do not well agree with public calamities, nor public stage-plays with the seasons of humiliation, this being an exercise of sad and pious solemnity, and the other being lascivious mirth and levity: It is therefore thought fit, and ordained, by the Lords and Commons in this Parliament assembled, That, while these sad causes and set times of humiliation do continue, public stage plays shall cease, and be forborn, instead of which are recommended to the people of this land the profitable and seasonable considerations of repentance, reconciliation, and peace with God, which probably may produce outward peace and prosperity, and bring again times of joy and gladness to these nations".